The AI industry likes to abuse the word “open.” It appears in product releases, research papers, policy debates, and investor presentations. A company publishes model files to Hugging Face, developers run them on their own GPUs, and the release is quickly described as an “open source model.” Not necessarily. It may only be open-weight.

The difference is more than a technicality. It determines whether you can merely deploy a completed neural network or whether you can meaningfully inspect, reproduce, alter, and redistribute the system that produced it. A genuinely open source system should grant the freedom to do all of the above.

Weights are the learned numerical parameters created by training. Together with the model architecture and inference code, they allow a large language model (LLM) to function. You can download an open-weight model, self-host it, fine-tune it on internal documents, and avoid routing prompts through a proprietary API.

Open weights are publicly available. They matter because running them locally can offer greater control over data, privacy, costs, supplier API changes, and vendor lock-in. They’ve also helped build a large ecosystem of local-model runtimes, inference providers, fine-tuning tools, and specialized downstream models.

The Open Source Initiative (OSI), steward of the Open Source Definition (OSD), makes the distinction directly: “Open Weights refer to the final weights and biases of a trained neural network.” Those values determine how a model interprets prompts and produces outputs. Releasing them can let others fine-tune, adapt, or deploy the model. But the OSI adds that weights alone expose only “a fraction of the information required for full accountability.”

As James Landay, director of the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI (HAI), explained: “Open weights are progress. You can download the model, run it on your own machine, keep it out of someone else’s data pipeline. But you still can’t see how the thing was built, what it was trained on, or why it behaves the way it does. That’s not an open model. That’s open distribution.”

Without the training data or sufficiently detailed documentation, outsiders cannot determine which sources were used, what copyrighted or private material may have been included, how data was selected or removed, which languages and communities were underrepresented, whether benchmark data leaked into training, or what alignment and safety methods affected the model after pretraining.

Landay continued: “There’s a wide gap between open-weight AI and open source AI.” He contends that unless developers disclose training data or provide a “thoroughly documented, auditable account of it,” you can’t test, reproduce, or challenge the work in the fullest sense.

The OSI has its own definition of open source AI: the Open Source AI Definition (OSAID 1.0). It requires model parameters, including weights, to be made available under OSI-approved terms, but does not prescribe a specific legal mechanism for doing so.

Luca Antiga, CTO of Lightning AI and a prominent PyTorch contributor, has argued that OSAID’s treatment of weights leaves “a gaping hole that will make licenses less effective in determining whether OSI-licensed AI systems can be adopted in real-world contexts.”

Other open source figures have also criticized OSAID. Bruce Perens, author of the original OSD, denounced the OSAID in 2024. He later declared: “It’s not Open Source! … It’s unfortunate that the Open Source Initiative itself is now involved in Openwashing.”

He’s far from alone. Bradley Kuhn, policy fellow and hacker-in-residence at the Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC), and Red Hat Senior Commercial Counsel Richard Fontana have called for OSAID to be repealed, arguing: “The OSI acted too quickly to impose an overly ambitious policy compromise on the community. OSAID undeniably created a rift in the FOSS community; that rift seriously damaged the OSI’s reputation, authority, and influence. Meanwhile, OSAID shows no signs of having any positive policy influence on machine learning practitioners, the FOSS community, or regulators.”

OSI acknowledged when OSAID 1.0 was released in October 2024 that the definition would continue to evolve. Critics contend that its central shortcomings have yet to be resolved.

That said, the Linux Foundation’s Mike Dolan submitted the Open Model, Data, and Weights (OpenMDW) license to the OSI. The license has been around since 2025 and lists contributors from Amazon, Meta, IBM, Microsoft, and Nvidia, giving it substantial industry backing.

Conventional open source revolves around source code. LLMs are a different kettle of fish: they combine code, architecture, and numerical weights derived from training datasets that may be proprietary, copyrighted, or undisclosed. OpenMDW’s answer is to define separate terms for a model’s architecture, training data, and weights, bringing the components supplied by a licensor under one agreement.

It sounds reasonable to me, but the submission has encountered objections on OSI’s license review mailing list. As Stefano Maffulli, OSI’s former executive director, who led the organization while OSAID was being formulated, said: “I continue getting the impression that the OpenMDW review is tainted by an ideological bias: Because we don’t like big tech and AI now is big tech, then we don’t like AI; therefore, we’ll do anything to block it.”

It’s too late to bury our heads in the sand. As Stanford’s Landay put it: “Open weights answer ‘Can I run this?’ Open source answers ‘Can I trust this, improve it, and build the next thing on top of it?’ Right now almost everyone – American labs and Chinese labs alike – is answering the first question but nowhere close to the second.”

We need both. Whether OSI adopts OpenMDW is an open question. Still, OpenMDW and its supporters are at least trying to establish licensing terms that cover code, data, and weights together. Unless someone succeeds, “open AI” risks becoming an oxymoron – or merely another hollow tech marketing term. ®

‘Humanist AI’ code of conduct spells out what Microsoft’s AI models should and shouldn’t do, and invites public feedback before a revised version lands later this year.

Microsoft AI has published a draft code of conduct for its AI models, opening a six-week public consultation on the rules it wants to govern their behaviour, from weapons and cybersecurity to emotional dependency.

The document, titled the Humanist AI Code of Conduct, was published yesterday (14 September) and is not currently used to train any AI models. A revised version is due toward the end of the year to guide 2027 model development.

The release comes days after individual researchers at Anthropic raised public concerns about AI risk. Jacob Coxon, who resigned from Anthropic, posted warnings about superintelligence risk on X last week, while Evan Hubinger, Anthropic’s alignment science lead, posted that he put the chance of catastrophic AI risk within a decade at greater than 10pc.

It also follows warnings from Anthropic’s Dario Amodei that it might be time to slow AI development, which drew a rare approval from rival OpenAI’s Sam Altman, and a somewhat predictable extreme reaction from the pro-AI US president who described the warnings as a ‘hoax’.

Microsoft’s code of conduct is a corporate governance framework. It sets out four objectives for AI models: maintaining human control and safety; avoiding anthropomorphism; supporting human flourishing; and reflecting plural values across different worldviews without being neutral on harm.

A section on Absolute Constraints prohibits models from assisting with chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear weapons, conducting offensive cyberoperations, evading human oversight, or engaging in large-scale manipulation.

The document also explicitly rules out any claim by its models to consciousness, feelings or legal personhood, framing this as a design principle rather than a disclaimer. It further prohibits romantic or companion-style AI interactions and the fostering of emotional dependency.

Microsoft says it convened focus groups with members of the public alongside experts in AI, law, ethics and policy while developing the document. The consultation period runs for six weeks from 14 September. Feedback can be submitted via the Microsoft AI website.

Don’t miss out on the knowledge you need to succeed. Sign up for the Daily Brief, Silicon Republic’s digest of need-to-know sci-tech news.

The Italian cybersecurity start-up aims to fight AI hackers using AI-powered innovations.

Exein, an Italy-headquartered cybersecurity start-up that protects smart, connected devices from hackers, has joined the global collection of unicorns post a $270m funding round that brought the company to a $1.7bn valuation. The round was led by Headline, with participation from Sofina, Goldman Sachs and others.

Established in Rome in 2018 by CEO Gianni Cuozzo, Exein has additional offices in Germany, Taiwan and the US. The company builds technology to secure hardware at the processor level and is embedded in 2bn chips globally. Consumers include Nvidia, AWS and Mediatek, among others. 

Cuozzo told the Financial Times that the new investment is necessary to enable the organisation to compete on a global scale for limited cybersecurity and computing professionals. 

Additionally, Exein intends to release its own foundational model for AI security in 2027. Cuozzo explained, “We are moving from having security software to having a secure model that is running constantly on the device and will automatically react to attacks.”

He added, “Right now I think the hackers have the edge. Exein’s  plan is to use embedded AI technology to combat threats and provide “machine-based protection in a world of machine-based attacks”. 

As the world becomes more digitally connected and advanced, the risk of cybersecurity breaches is increasing. It was recently confirmed that 12 Irish account holders are among the 680 global consumers of Revolut who had their sensitive data exposed. 

Also, late last week OpenAI’s Sam Altman, announced that the company will not be going public this year as “Right now would be an ill-advised moment to go public.”

He explained that the company isn’t ready and that there is much to be done in the way of safety, alignment and showing how the industry and governments can work together.

Don’t miss out on the knowledge you need to succeed. Sign up for the Daily Brief, Silicon Republic’s digest of need-to-know sci-tech news.

For the best part of a decade, abusive deepfake “pornography” websites have published thousands of nonconsensual videos depicting women, including high-profile celebrities, politicians, and public figures, into sexual situations. Now, in what is likely the largest takedown of explicit deepfake websites to date, officials in New York have seized more than a dozen of the harmful sites.

On Monday, the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office announced the seizure of 12 domains which it says have been used for “unlawfully” sharing, publishing, and selling celebrity deepfake videos. Around 1,200 people—overwhelmingly women—were depicted in nonconsensual sexual images and videos on the websites, the office says. These included social media influencers, actors, activists, athletes, musicians, and politicians.

“These horrific violations of privacy follow victims into their careers and personal lives and take an immense toll on emotional and mental well-being,” district attorney Alvin Bragg said in a statement, urging potential victims to come forward and contact his office’s cybercrime bureau. The office says its investigations into who is responsible for the websites, plus those who uploaded damaging videos of victims, are ongoing.

The seizures, carried out under New York’s criminal procedure laws, mark perhaps one of the most significant and sweeping actions against websites hosting explicit deepfake videos since the technology first emerged at the end of 2017. As artificial intelligence technology has improved, a dark industry of websites, apps, and bots has appeared: They are designed to “undress” photos of women or create graphic sexual videos that include them. The images and videos are increasingly realistic and can be generated in seconds.

While deepfake technology is widely used against non-famous women and girls—often being shared in private social media groups—celebrities have spoken out about the many harms of being depicted in the content and the challenges of getting it removed. While laws against deepfakes have been slow to emerge, the US Take It Down Act increasingly allows images to be removed, with part of the law allowing law enforcement officials to take down and seize websites.

The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office has not publicly named the websites it has seized. However, ahead of Bragg’s announcement, WIRED independently observed several of the sites’ homepages being replaced by takedown notices—“THIS DOMAIN HAS BEEN SEIZED”—late last week, with the sites now saying they have been taken over following a seizure warrant issued by a New York State Supreme Court.

“The takedowns are a significant win in the fight against synthetic nonconsensual intimate imagery (NCII),” says Leonie Oehmig, a researcher at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), who has studied the deepfake creation ecosystem. Oehmig says that enforcement of state laws shows that the harmful content can be tackled and that the seized sites don’t appear to be accessible if using VPNs to try and access them from other locations. “This shows that meaningful, coordinated enforcement is achievable even where regulation itself remains fragmented across jurisdictions.”

The websites were likely viewed millions of times. Many used names that included phrases such as “sex celebrity” or promised “real deepfakes.” They hosted false videos of some of the world’s most famous celebrities, with one saying, “various actresses’ faces are used for deepfakes.”

Videos could be several minutes in length and include fully sexually explicit scenes—often swapping the faces of celebrities or public figures into existing pornographic videos. Archived versions of the websites show some videos had been watched tens of thousands of times, with one of the websites claiming to have been online since 2018.

• IPVanish just completed a two-year, ground-up network rebuild
• The upgrade leans on faster ports, direct peering, and dual data centers
• The provider now promises a 41% speed boost at peak times

IPVanish has just called time on a project most of its users never saw: a two-year, ground-up rebuild of its entire server network.

Server count, the company argues, is not what makes a network fast. How those servers are built, connected, and peered is what’s actually important. Anyone weighing up the best VPN for speed will want to pay attention.

Genesis brought its Magma GT Concept to life on a 9-kilometer stretch of Italian mountain road last week. The mid-engined grand tourer, first shown as a still object at Le Mans in June, rolled onto the closed Strada Borromea on Mount Mottarone for the Tutto Bene Hillclimb, an invitation-only gathering of 85 cars overlooking Lake Maggiore.

Organizers Race Service and BorromeodeSilva treat the 51-corner route as a moving showcase of automotive design rather than a timed competition. Drivers have the freedom to make their own decisions and choose their own pace. Genesis seized this opportunity to show that their forest green coupe was more than just a beautiful design concept. You can now add 800 horsepower thanks to a twin-turbo 3.2 liter V8, identical to the one found in the GMR-001 hypercar, which is mounted out back and sends everything to the rear wheels.

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The wet roads and rain pinging off the bodywork prevented the driver from really letting fly. Spectators had their umbrellas out as the Magma GT sat on the starting line, looking stunning. At the green, there was a brief period of wheelspin before the V8 kicked in and the car began to drive at a steady speed. Footage from the NM2255 Raw Car Sounds channel demonstrates how effectively the prototype goes through turns and pulls out even when the road becomes slippery.

When the driver opened the throttle, the valley filled with a deep rumbling from the exhaust. The sound was like that of a true mid-engine vehicle, not a muffled luxury sedan. Even at relatively low speeds, the automobile would begin to slide on the damp road. That’s a gentle reminder that Genesis wasn’t attempting to break any records with this one-off, but rather to keep it together. Still, the car appeared rooted and eager to do its job, with its low profile and broad stance just doing what the driver ordered it.

André Lotterer, fresh off his seventh-place finish at Lone Star Le Mans, was given the opportunity to drive the X Skorpio Concept over the same route for its European debut. Genesis also unveiled the GMR-001 and Box Buggy Concept, and with so many cars on the slope, things got a little chaotic. The Magma GT’s butterfly doors opened, revealing a lava orange leather interior that contrasted nicely with the green exterior.

Production is still years away, with rumors of a roadster, track-hardened variant, and GT3 racecar circulating. For one afternoon in the Italian Alps, the Magma GT only needed to climb, stay steady, and sound like it belonged with the luxury vehicles that often utilize these roads. It accomplished all three
[Source]

After you upgrade your iPhone to iOS 27, you might notice your device doing a little extra thinking. That’s because the update brings a revamped Search system to your device, and it needs some time to get to know everything on your iPhone. 

You can download iOS 27 now by going to Settings > General > Software Update > Update Now and following the prompts on your screen.

At June’s Worldwide Developers Conference, Apple announced that it was rebuilding its Search interface for iOS 27. The company said the restructure would make searching across your device faster, more reliable and more accurate. In order to do that, iOS 27 has to reindex items across your iPhone. So after you update, you’ll see a banner in Settings that reads “Optimizing Search and Siri.” This is a normal part of the update, and it could take a while to finish, but the good news is you can still use your iPhone during this process.

Here’s what you need to know about the indexing and optimization process once you download iOS 27.

What is indexing?

Data indexing is the process of scanning and organizing metadata from data assets into an index so it can be easily searched.

“Think of it like the index of a book,” data management company Komprise wrote online. “[The index] doesn’t hold the content, but it tells you where to find it, and what’s inside.”

Apple’s support page about Spotlight indexing says that Spotlight search indexes your iPhone when you first set up your device, as data changes on your device and after you update your iPhone. So your device has reindexed before and you likely never noticed – I know I didn’t.

Apple also notes that your iPhone’s index “stays on your device and isn’t shared with Apple or your other devices.” 

Indexing can take hours or days

Apple’s support page notes that indexing could take anywhere from a couple hours to a few days. When I updated my iPhone to a beta version of iOS 27, my iPhone took a couple hours to index, but the more stuff you have stored on your phone, the longer it will take. 

The process takes longer this time around because Apple rebuilt its Search interface in iOS 27. So the update isn’t just adding a few more things to the index, it’s implementing a new search system. 

That means the system isn’t just crawling through the new stuff — it needs to go back through all the data in your phone. Think of it like cataloging new items you’ve bought versus creating an inventory of everything in your home.

Apple does offer a few suggestions on how to speed up the process:

• Plug your device into a power source.
• Connect your device to Wi-Fi.
• Don’t use your iPhone.

OK, can I still use my iPhone?

You can! Indexing doesn’t prevent you from using your iPhone, but it goes faster if you set the phone aside.

If you do use your iPhone during the process, your Spotlight search results might be incomplete because it hasn’t finished indexing. Otherwise, your device should operate as usual. Which is good because I couldn’t imagine going without my phone for a few days at this point – don’t judge me. 

Spotlight search still not working? 

If your iPhone is finished indexing – the banner in Settings will go away – and you’re still running into issues, you should review your Search settings and make sure Spotlight has access to your apps. Here’s how to check. 

1. Tap Settings.
2. Tap Search.

From here, you can adjust what shows up in Spotlight, and near the bottom of the menu, you can review which apps Spotlight has access to. You can tap into each app to grant or revoke Spotlight permission. 

However, there doesn’t seem to be a way to grant or revoke Spotlight access across all apps at once, so you have to go into each individual app to do this. 

For more on Apple, here’s what to know about the iPhone Duo and everything Apple announced at its “Surprise and shine” event.

Zachary McAuliffe

Senior writer

Zach began writing for CNET in November, 2021 after writing for a broadcast news station in his hometown, Cincinnati, for five years. You can usually find him hanging out with his wife, son and dog. You can reach him at zmcauliffe@cnet.com.

See full bio

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The latest iOS update is out now. Apple released iOS 27 on Monday, Sept. 14 (just as I predicted). You’d be forgiven for thinking Siri AI is the only new addition, but the OS includes several other features — even if they aren’t especially groundbreaking.

You can download iOS 27 now by going to Settings > General > Software Update > Update Now and following the prompts on your screen.

I’ve been using iOS 27 betas since June, and found a handful of useful new features, including a new Liquid Glass slider, and even started testing the revamped Siri after avoiding the digital assistant for a decade. Overall, my phone feels snappier and opening apps is almost instantaneous. 

Apple’s iOS 27 brings a lot of quality of life upgrades to your device without as many standout new features as previous iOS updates — similar to Liquid Glass in iOS 26. There are also a few questionable changes, such as a new way to access your Notification Center, which isn’t unusual for these annual upgrades. Overall, iOS 27 is an inoffensive update filled with subtle improvements that you might not notice unless they’re pointed out.

As the official pointer-outer person, that’s my cue to give you a virtual tour around Siri AI and some of my favorite changes, as well as a few updates that left me scratching my head.

Note that my experience with these features is based on beta versions of iOS 27, so it’s possible some of them work differently on the public release. Siri AI is still in beta, even after the public release of iOS 27, and remains an opt-in experience.

iOS 27’s best improvements

Siri gets an AI overhaul

The latest iOS update has convinced me to turn over some daily digital chores to Siri, such as looking up driving directions or checking my schedule. Despite a few flaws, Siri worked well when I asked it to plot my route in CarPlay, find a cake recipe and perform a number of other simple tasks. The result? I’m now comfortable using Siri for small jobs.

In iOS 27, Siri AI is disabled by default, so you have to enable it if you want to use it. Here’s how to do so. 

1. Tap Settings.
2. Tap Siri. 
3. Tap Try New Siri.

It can also take time to go from being waitlisted to being able to ask Siri AI for a gift recommendation for your friend based on a text thread. Don’t forget: Siri AI is also still in beta in iOS 27, so you could run into bugs or have odd experiences with the digital assistant. Plus, Siri AI is only available in Apple Intelligence-compatible devices. iPhone 14 models or older (or the iPhone 15 or 15 Plus models) can’t access the enhanced assistant.

New Liquid Glass slider, and one questionable option

Screenshot by Zach McAuliffe/CNET

After Apple launched Liquid Glass in iOS 26, the company added ways to adjust transparency to address readability issues. With iOS 27, you can get as close to disabling the design as possible thanks to a new Liquid Glass slider. After installing iOS 27, you’re given an option to adjust just how liquidy or glassy you want things. But if you skip that screen, here’s where to find the Liquid Glass slider.

1. Tap Settings.
2. Tap Appearance. 
3. Tap Liquid Glass. 

From here, you can make Liquid Glass elements on your device more or less transparent by dragging the slider to the right. If you want more see-throughness, so elements are more transparent, drag it left. I find it difficult to tell menus and background items apart — I don’t understand who would want this option, but it’s there if you do. 

I’ve been happily using the totally frosted look (slider all the way to the right) for a few weeks now. While I didn’t mind Liquid Glass as much as other folks, the frosted setting ensures I can read and see the text, menus and icons properly. 

Safari gets an upgrade, too

My CNET colleague Jason Chun has been enjoying the Safari upgrades in iOS 27, including favorable UI tweaks. He noted that the All Tabs icon replaces the three-dot menu in Safari’s Compact toolbar. He also likes the return of the Bookmarks icon to the top of a new tab next to Reading List and History, and that Safari can automatically organize tabs. 

“It’s a super useful feature,” Chun wrote. “Especially if you keep as many emotional support tabs open as I do (currently 72).” 

More volume control across your device

Screenshot by Zach McAuliffe/CNET

Apple finally gives you the choice to adjust the volumes of your ringtones, alerts and alarms independently. This has been greatly helpful, ensuring my alarm isn’t so loud that it wakes up my infant son at night, yet keeping my ringtone loud enough during the day that I can hear it over him crying. 

To separate the volume levels, you have to disable two switches:

1. Tap Settings.
2. Tap Sounds & Haptics.
3. Disable the switches next to both instances of Match Ringtone Volume.

You can then use the sliders beneath those switches to change the volume of your alarms and your alerts without affecting your ringtone volume. 

Pasting photos and links into messages is easier

Screenshot by Zach McAuliffe/CNET

There’s also an easy way to paste photos, links from social media and more into Messages in iOS 27. If you copy one of those things and go into a chat, Messages will display an option above your keyboard to paste the item into your message before you start typing. 

It’s a simple adjustment that streamlines texting assets to folks. Before, you had to long-press on the text box and tap Paste. That’s not a lot of steps, but tapping the option above the keyboard is faster.

I also appreciate how this makes it easier to ensure I’m pasting the intended photo or link into a message instead of another link or text from hours ago. I’ve pasted unrelated gibberish into texting fields many times before iOS 27.

The Weather app shows different elements

Screenshot by Zach McAuliffe/CNET

The Weather app gets another small tweak, showing more weather elements throughout the day. You can see hour-by-hour forecasts for rain and winds in your area by tapping water drop and wind symbols in the Conditions bar in the app. You can also see those conditions for the coming days of the week.

This is a welcome feature that helps me plan my day before stepping out the door with just a glance. 

New on-screen timer

Screenshot by Zach McAuliffe/CNET

You also don’t need to go into your clock app to set a timer in iOS 27. If you open the timer in your Control Center, a new timer window will appear at the top of your screen with a horizontal dial you can pull left or right to get the exact countdown you need (down to 15-second increments). You can set and start a timer from here and access it while in other apps. 

I like being able to quickly set and keep track of a timer without switching apps — a small but mighty improvement.

Three changes I’m still lost on

A standalone Siri app is now a thing

Screenshot by Zach McAuliffe/CNET

Apple Intelligence-compatible devices get a new Siri app in iOS 27 that lets you interact with the digital assistant in a similar way to other chatbots, such as Gemini on Android, and access past conversations or requests within the app.

I struggle to see the appeal of this app over the regular Siri voice assistant. It feels easier to use Siri without the app in most instances, such as asking the assistant to look up the hours of a local bookstore.

Even if you’re using the Siri app as a search engine, it feels easier to, you know… use a search engine. I asked Siri to check the news, for example, and the app would regularly give me news that was at least a few days old. This is better than when I tested an earlier beta version of iOS 27 and the app gave me news from about a month prior, but it’s still not what I’m looking for.

It does give you links at the bottom of queries to verify information, which is good if you use the app as such. However, a search engine such as DuckDuckGo could give me those links without forcing me to wade through a preamble that might be full of outdated or incorrect information.

Notification Center has a new home thanks to Siri AI

If you do enable the new Siri AI, your iPhone’s Notification Center gets a new home — much to my dismay. Instead of two sections for the drag-from-the-top touch shortcuts, now there are three. Instead of dragging down from the center of your home screen to see your notifications, now you have to drag down from the top-left corner of your home screen. If you drag down from the center, you open a new Search or Ask bar. 

I’m right-handed and this is dreadful. It’s one of the more annoying things about iOS 27. It messes with my muscle memory and my expectations of where things are located on my phone.

The good news is that if you don’t enable Siri AI (or later disable it), you can still access your Notification Center by dragging down from the top center of your home screen. It does mean you’d need to sacrifice using Siri AI — it all comes down to your UX preference. 

The tiny clock is tiny and morally wrong

Screenshot by Zach McAuliffe/CNET

You can shrink your lock screen clock in iOS 27 when customizing your lock screen. Tap the highlighted button in the picture above and the clock shrinks down into the date bar across the top of your screen. 

Sure, that option lets you see more of your lock screen background. However, I’m an advocate of the lock screen’s big clock and therefore consider the tiny clock to be heresy. Tiny clock feels too small to be comfortably legible. People who like this setting: Can you see Pluto on a clear night without a telescope?

iOS 27 is a step in the right direction

Siri AI is the centerpiece of the update, and Apple has improved on the digital assistant enough that if you don’t already use it, I’d suggest giving it another chance. Most of the other new features are small improvements and upgrades that make for a pleasant, if sometimes underwhelming, experience.

For more on the operating system, you can check out how to change some of the most annoying features on the OS and how I learned to stop worrying and began to enjoy Siri.

Zachary McAuliffe

Senior writer

Zach began writing for CNET in November, 2021 after writing for a broadcast news station in his hometown, Cincinnati, for five years. You can usually find him hanging out with his wife, son and dog. You can reach him at zmcauliffe@cnet.com.

See full bio

Cornelis, a company creating networking technology to help AI chips communicate more effectively, announced Monday that it has raised $205 million in a funding round led by IAG Capital Partners.

It also announced a product called Active Compute Fabric, a network technology that targets the fact that much GPU time is wasted waiting for data to arrive. Cornelis hopes to address this with a networking fabric that lets chips process and send information at the same time.

The company, which spun off from Intel in 2020, is competing with Nvidia by offering an open architecture, meaning customers can use a variety of GPU and accelerator hardware with Cornelis’ networking fabric. Though Nvidia chips can technically run on other networking fabrics, they’re optimized to run on Nvidia’s own software, making it much easier — and more enticing — for customers to use Nvidia’s full GPU stack. Cornelis is part of a new wave of AI infrastructure companies emerging to break apart Nvidia’s market dominance, piece by piece (or chip by chip, one could say). 

Cornelis has already started shipping its product and is working on a new generation of it, expected to be released later this year. 

OpenAI has bought smartphone camera maker Glass Imaging in a deal worth over $300 million, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal. The company, founded in 2019 and based in Los Altos, California, had previously raised about $30 million in funding from investors.

Glass Imaging was founded by Ziv Attar and Tom Bishop, a pair of former Apple engineers who previously led the team that developed Apple’s Portrait Mode. This background directly informs the work they now do at Glass Imaging, where they use AI to overcome the physical size constraints of smartphone cameras. Rather than using AI to edit a photo after it’s been taken, Glass Imaging uses neural networks to learn about individual camera systems — like the different cameras on various smartphone models — to yield better images from the moment the shutter clicks.

OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The ChatGPT maker is rumored to be working on its own hardware, like smartphones, earbuds, and AI companion devices.

In 2025, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and famed Apple designer Jony Ive revealed that they had been working together on a device startup called io, when OpenAI bought Ive’s company for $6.5 billion.